BRYAN JONES. Mark Twain Made Me Do It and Other Plains Adventures. Bison Books. Paperback, Kindle, 310 pages, $20, $19.95, Amazon.com
A collection of humorous essays portraying western Nebraska life and culture of the 1950s. Anecdotes on small-town baseball and the polio epidemic of 1952 provide a historic backdrop to the story of a wide-eyed boy exploring the limits of his universe.